ntil recent historical times Africa was an un­known continent: the National Tapestry depicts the story of the gradual unveiling of that portion of central Africa which forms present-day Rhodesia.

outh-central Africa appears to have been the cradle of mankind. During the early pleistocene, little creatures some four feet tall emerged there who were ape-like in their massive jaws and projecting muzzles, but man-like in the relatively large size of their brains and their erect posture..

ossilized fragments of this genus, Australopithecus africanus, have been found in several sites close to the Rhodesian borders, and no doubt they inhabited its present territory. From Africa they spread throughout the tropics of the Old World, and after several mutational changes crossed the human threshold to emerge as Homo sapiens..

part from the Mediterranean coastline, Africa in classical times was a mysterious unknown, filled with an inexhaustible reservoir of wonders.The Egyptian Pharaohs had sent several expeditions beyond the Sahara as early as 2300 B.C., and in 400 B.C. Herodotus records that Greek explorers made contact with pygmy people living beyond the desert. About A.D. 150 the Alexandrian geographer Claudius Ptolomy gave a fairly accurate representation of Africa in his famous “Geography”, and his concepts were slavishly copied on maps right through the Middle Ages. Ignorance of the interior was almost complete, however, and, as Swift confirms, let mediaeval

...geographers in Afric-maps
with savage-pictures fill their gaps;
And o’er unhabitable downs,
Place elephants for want of towns.

he chroniclers of the Middle Ages peopled the African interior too with pygmies, six inches high, who waged perpetual warwith storks, and semi-human strap-foots who crawled instead of walking, and the Blemmyes who had no heads but mouth and eyes both in their breasts”. They also filled the continent with a monstrous bestiary of animals: the African skies were said to be darkened by birds so huge that they could carry ofi elephants in their claws, while on the ground dwelled the dreaded Manti­choras with a lion’s body, the face of a human being (though with six separate rows of teeth) which defended itself like a scorpion with a venemous sting..

he Nile River for centuries was believed to rise in two great African inland seas, and this feature is shown in all the ancient maps..